Celebrating MLK Day

As visiting speaker for the College’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, Dawn Turner Trice, columnist for the Chicago Tribune, offered her views on race at the crossroads of the Obama presidency. During a dialogue with students in Koten Chapel, she explained that President Barack Obama’s win in the Iowa caucuses moved her to write about racial progress, a topic she typically avoided in her columns. “Young people in Iowa came out in droves to vote—this blindsided me,” she admitted. “It was time to look at what was going on with race in this country.”

In addition, alumna Tashona Marshall ‘02, principal of Johnson School of the Arts in Cedar Rapids, IA, spoke at the annual prayer breakfast held January 19. Her speech, “Extraordinary Leaders for Extraordinary Times,” challenged her audience to make a difference and to play a part in the reality of King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

Later in the week, musician and filmmaker Justin Dillon visited campus to talk about his film “Call + Response,” which is about modern-day human trafficking.